It’s Groundhog Day and I have emerged from my little hole in the ground to let you know my predictions for funding this year for Health Tech companies! League raises $95 million; Reimagine Care raises $25 million; Resilience raises 40 euros; Mantra Health raises $22 million, and Physician Partners raises $500 million. Oh and Akili is going to SPAC, maybe -Matthew Holt

Transcript:

Jessica DaMassa:

Well, it’s Groundhog Day, and that can only mean one thing. Matthew Holt has emerged from his little hole in the ground to let us know what his prediction is for more funding in this next year for health tech companies. Will he see his shadow and be scared back into the hall? It looks like it. It’s the February 2nd episode of Health Tech Deals.

Matthew Holt:

All right. Jessica, Jessica, Jess. I know I’ve seen the movie, but I don’t understand it. If the groundhog sees his shadow because the sun is up, there’s more winter?

Jessica DaMassa:

Yes.

Matthew Holt:

But if he doesn’t see his shadow because there’s no sun, winter’s ended?

Jessica DaMassa:

Yeah. An early spring. If he sees his shadow…

Matthew Holt:

But why does that make any sense? Shouldn’t the sun come up for spring?

Jessica DaMassa:

Yeah. You have to think about it from the perspective of the groundhog. You can’t think about the cold weather…

Matthew Holt:

But hang on. How could the groundhog sees his shadow anyway? Unless it’s 10 o’clock. Go on.

Jessica DaMassa:

He comes out, he gets scared by himself, which has happened to the best of us. Let’s admit it. Goes back in the hole, which means he is going to stay there for six more weeks, and that means six more weeks of winter. But if he comes out and it’s cloudy and he doesn’t see his shadow, he’s like, “This is cool.” And then hangs out. And then it means an early spring.

Matthew Holt:

That makes no sense to anybody.

Jessica DaMassa:

Clearly you are not… Having grown up in Seattle…

Matthew Holt:

Hang on.

Jessica DaMassa:

This was an integral moment of the winter, of “Oh God, I hope he doesn’t see his shadow. I hope he’s fine.”

Matthew Holt:

The other question is, what has this got to do with Health Tech Funding? If I go back inside…

Jessica DaMassa:

You are our groundhog. If you see your shadow, that’s it, funding dried up this year.

Matthew Holt:

Oh God. Maybe it’s over.

Jessica DaMassa:

If you don’t see your shadow, which it was kind of dicey, we’re going to have to look back at the footage. You were scared regardless, but you usually are, so I think it’s okay. But yeah, if you don’t see your shadow, then I think the funding climate is great. Folks are going to have to look at the Rock Health reports and see how we can correlate it with whether or not you saw your shadow.

Matthew Holt:

Are you ready?

Jessica DaMassa:

Yeah. Let’s go. League gets 95 million. It brings their total up to 205. I thought this was a dating app. What is this?

Matthew Holt:

I thought it was a dating app too, which I think there’s some of that stuff going on in the next deals. It’s some kind of a back door, front door stuff. They work with Humana, a bunch of plan. I keep reading their stuff. I have no idea what they do. It’s some kind of integration of data and stuff for consumer experience. It’s Canadian. Must be nice.

Jessica DaMassa:

Okay. In-home chemo provider, Reimagine Care, gets 25 million.

Matthew Holt:

This is super clever. People go to get chemo all the time. Then you found out that there was Coronavirus, people didn’t want to go to the hospital. The [inaudible 00:03:08] said, “Hmm, let’s do chemo in the house and send all the stuff there.” It’s another different in-home provider, we’ve had Medically Home and others. Santé Ventures, Martin Ventures, LRV are in this one. I think it’s a good idea.

Jessica DaMassa:

All right. More in the cancer space, this time is a French based company called Resilience. They get 40 million euros.

Matthew Holt:

Yeah. This is wacky to me. A cancer care management system has got a patient facing and an oncologist facing part. I did note that both the founders between them after doing this a year have had zero healthcare experience before. Maybe they’ll revolutionize French cancer care. Maybe not. 45 million euros says who knows.

Jessica DaMassa:

Okay. How about Mantra Health? They get 22 million, brings their total up to 29. One of the co-founders of Tinder is leading this. Mental health for college kids.

Matthew Holt:

You’re right. It’s mental health for college kids, but for short term treatment, also a long term treatment aimed at college kids. It’s a great market. Lot of need there.

Jessica DaMassa:

All right. Physician Partners, 500 million dollars, is a primary care group in Florida.

Matthew Holt:

This is weird. 500 million dollars from private equity company, Kinderhook, for Physician Partners. They have about 120, 130 doctors on their system. About 135,000 lives Medicare Advantage, Medicaid managed lives. They are about half the size of Cano, which went public and is now trading with a valuation of about a billion dollars, which has roughly a thousand providers in the system. And a couple hundred thousand, I think it’s a few more, Medicare managed lives. I’m confused about this, other than the people who ran Physician Partners in Tampa came from Wellcare, and literally they became part of the same team. Wellcare got raided by the FBI a while back. Maybe this will happen to these guys too. Every time I see a new thing in Florida doing new manage care, working with Humana or anybody else, I’m thinking…

Jessica DaMassa:

Is this a front for something else?

Matthew Holt:

I’m sure they’re very nice people, but we’ll see how it goes. It is very strange, that the place which has the most chaos and the most fraud in healthcare, which is Florida, is now producing these different… You have Cano, you have ChenMed  which isn’t public yet. You have Apollo Med from there as well. Now there’s another one which is attracting all this funding in the public and private, to run medical groups. In the end medical groups are very hard businesses. As you can see with the stock price of Oak Street Health and some others. I hope they do well because there’s a need for better, more organized medical groups in Florida. Hopefully they’re it?

Jessica DaMassa:

Well, this was a motley little potpourri of deals. Are you scared?

Matthew Holt:

Certainly was.

Jessica DaMassa:

Are you scared of these deals? Maybe that’s it. Instead of the sun, these were the deals we had today. Are you terrified by these deals? More funding, less funny? I don’t know.

Matthew Holt:

Pretty much. Yeah. The couple we missed, including there’s another psychiatry only network called Talkiatry, which raised 17 million from New York. There’s all kinds of random stuff going on. I don’t know. Probably it’ll happen, and I think that the 500 million is weird, but it’s a private equity deal. I’m not sure if we’re going to see the flow that we saw at the end of last year. I can’t see us reproducing that, especially in a marketplace where the publicly trading companies…Well, they’ve been going up the last few days, having gone down massive, double percentages, in some cases, two thirds to 80% off, now they’re going up five, 10%, but they’re crawling back slowly with the rest of the stock market. I don’t see the private companies. I think it will be another six weeks of winter, or me going back into my hovel or hole or whatever it is. I don’t think we’re going to be seeing the level of investment we saw while this all sorts itself out. Having said that, today I’m at a conference looking at venture capital and I will talk to a bunch of venture capitalists in San Diego and figure out what they are saying.

Jessica DaMassa:

Good. Find out what they have to say about the whole matter at hand here.

Matthew Holt:

They’re probably saying we can buy the same thing cheaper with all our extra money. On the other hand, they’re all raising lots of money. So who knows?

Jessica DaMassa:

I love how you always land on who knows. Great groundhogging there. At least Punxsutawney Phil has a definite prediction.

Matthew Holt:

Either he’s in or he’s out. And I’m in the middle.

Jessica DaMassa:

Always.

Matthew Holt:

Maybe it’s four more weeks of winter.

Jessica DaMassa:

Way to safeguard yourself from never being wrong. That’s what this is all about. You can’t say I was wrong, I didn’t say anything at all. That’s right, Matthew Holt, you sure didn’t.

Jessica DaMassa:

For more of nothing, head on over to Twitter, follow the guy @boltyboy, the San Diego exploits should be pretty good to watch here. See those. And I am over @jessdamassa, and then you can of course, sign up for the email newsletter over there at thehealthcareblog.com, and you’ll get these episodes of Health Tech Deals, my WTF health interviews, and all the other content that is put up on the blog over the course of the week delivered directly into your inbox.

Matthew Holt:

I’ll do this again until next winter?

Jessica DaMassa:

Yeah. Next time we’re getting you a cute little top hat that you can wear.

Matthew Holt:

Shouldn’t you have the top hat and take me out of the box?

Jessica DaMassa:

Mayoral sash, that would be good for me. I would rock that.

Matthew Holt:

We’ll get you a sash.

Jessica DaMassa:

Thank you.

Matthew Holt:

Say goodbye.

Jessica DaMassa:

Bye.